In 2005, the romantic comedy-drama Saving Face, directed by Chinese-American lesbian filmmaker Alice Wu, broke ground for its realistic portrayal of queer issues in Chinese-American families (Wu wouldn’t sell the script to a studio in order to maintain artistic control). Naturally, this means it took 15 years for her to be able to make another film. But now she’s back with what promises to be a sweetly queer Netflix YA film, The Half of It.
It’s about a shy, bookish, high school girl named Ellie (Leah Lewis, Nancy Drew) hired to script some love letters and articulate romantic dialogue for a kind but not-too-bright jock (Daniel Diemer, Sacred Lies) who needs help getting the attention of his opposite-sex crush (newcomer Alexxis Lemire). And then Ellie realizes she has feelings for the same girl. We’re going to guess that this ends up one for our team, but you know what, anything can happen in 2020. So we’ll be sitting our John Hughes-loving selves down to watch it on Netflix later this year when it drops.
It has been more than 20 years since Jackass entered our lives, asking us to love it, and making the world a better place with idiotic stunts. The men of that television and cinematic universe – Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Ryan Dunn (R.I.P.), Chris Pontius, Steve O., and others – risked good sense and bodily well-being in the pursuit of plotless comedy mayhem. That they also won the attention of LGBTQ+ audiences with their idiosyncratic form of queer allyship and goofy male intimacy was just part of a collective stance. They were too cool to care about “no homo” bro culture. So now that there’s a fourth Jackass movie in the works from Paramount, slated for a spring 2021 release, our official position is one of happy anticipation. And a little fear. These guys are all in their 40s. Bouncing back from spinal injuries is no joke.
Romeo San Vicente’s idea of a dangerous stunt is carrying a cup of hot tea from the kitchen to the table.
